Diamonds Ads Aren't A Girl's Best Friend

There's a particular commercial on TV these days that appalls me more every time I see it.

I'm sure it's familiar to almost everyone: The commercial is for diamonds -- so, DeBeers, since they own the diamond supply -- and it's a guy standing in a delicious European piazza running through piles of birds screaming, "I LOVE THIS WOMAN." And his fiancee's all mortified and embarrassed until she sees that he's holding a diamond, and she takes it and loses her breath and then hugs him and whispers, "I LOVE this man."

I hate that woman.

Every time we see this commercial, Lauren and I come away with new hatred for her. It's the most embarrassing ad. We break it apart and spit at it and add subtext and generally loathe it with vigor. It shames womankind, mostly because I feel like I know what the advertisers think this woman represents, and I'm affronted by the idea that I might be expected to fit into that image.

The woman, for one thing, fits into an ever-growing cadre of chicks in commercials who are the smart, sassy, savvy partners to complete buffoons. These are the guys who don't understand that they can custom-order cars on the Internet, or who get duped into thinking Hamburger Helper is haute cuisine, or whose bumbling idiocy aggravate the women into besting them with brains just to shut them up. All married couples in commercials are lopsided: The women are mean, the men are dumb.

This woman's demanding of her buffoon. She's the kind of woman who doesn't like sports and gets all twitchy when her guy wants to watch the big game, calling her girlfriends and making nasty cracks about his undying devotion to the Miami Dolphins. She makes a big show out of not understanding the terminology and likes to treat it like some arcane language that only the truly bizarre or mildly retarded want to understand, yet she'll stoop to his level and try to grasp this "touchback" and "blitz" so that she has a bargaining chip next time the garage needs cleaning. She'll yell at him to mow the lawn and fix the toaster during The Big Game, or glare at him for scheduling poker night when she very clearly indirectly implied two weeks ago that she would enjoy renting a movie and if he knew her at all he'd have picked up on the fact that she wanted to rent "Chicago" and watch it that very night with Chinese takeout and some brownies.

She gets pissed off if he doesn't take her to the opera, which she doesn't really like and which kind of puts her to sleep, but which she pretends to like because all her friends do and she wants to be looked upon as cultured. So she guilts him into thinking he has to take her.

And she demands grand gestures. She complains that he doesn't do anything romantic any more -- she wants flowers at work, expensive dinners, pretty jewelry, and lots of compliments -- yet when she gets a loud and seemingly spontaneous display of love, she cringes inside. He shouts in a foreign city that he's in love with her, and he's just trying to do something nice even if it's a bit on the dorky side, and she can't appreciate it because she's too worried that people are staring and wondering if he's drunk. She glares at him and she tries to shut him up. She wonders briefly if he is drunk, and makes a mental note to let slip some passive-aggressive remarks about how Betty's husband's developed a frustrating beer belly and scotch-whiskey causes impotence. She just wants to take some photos she can show off and then blow up into a nice Christmas card with a pithy slogan that oh-so-suavely incorporates a French word they learned on the trip, as if it's now part of their vernacular.

But then he stops his yelling and shouting and he's stoped tugging adoringly at her hand. Suddenly, he's got a box in his hand. He's presenting her with a diamond, and the ice melts her. Suddenly she's all gushy emotion, panting and covering her mouth and hugging him and telling him she loves him and whispering sweet nothings in his ear. A few seconds ago she wanted to drop through the cobbled ground, or perhaps kick him down a manhole, but now that she's blinged out, she's touched. She loves him back because his loud conspicuousness came with a diamond.

It's destined to fail. She'll sleep with her coworker because he wears cologne and nicer suits. He'll get her knocked up and propose to her while still boffing his secretary, and after getting her up the duff a second time he'll run off with her little sister to the Caribbean and stiff her on child support. Her ex will end up smarter and wiser and with someone who isn't a controlling shrew, and who doesn't mind the occasional loving outburst in a public place -- and, shockingly, doesn't even demand gemstone reconpense. He'll let his beer belly sag over his pants, enough so that some of his undershirts don't cover and leave an exposed strip of wan skin that's daring the world to disapprove of it, and she won't care. They'll be in love and happy and well-adjusted.

But the woman will end up marrying the first nice single father from the PTA that she meets, and he'll be balding and overly flattered by her attention. They'll never have sex; she'll button up her nightdress like a chastity sheath, and he'll grab a bottle of red wine and pass out on the porch swing as their giggling, tipsy children tiptoe in past curfew.

Then one day she'll find the diamond necklace hidden away in the armoire, dusty and seldom worn, and think back to the day he gave it to her and she acted like a selfish and ungrateful ho. And she'll be kind of sorry about it, because really, having that nice-looking guy skip around shouting, "I LOVE THAT WOMAN," really isn't so horrible.

Or, maybe not. Maybe the director will yell "CUT" and they'll go back to their lives as career extras, and everything will be fine.

But I really hate that woman. And I love to hate that ad.

Someone got here by searching for: Marshall Mathers favorite flowers Lamenting: That BBC America cancelled EastEnders ? and RIGHT as Dirty Den returned from the grave to wreak havoc, and as Sharon was having a semi-incestuous relationship with her brother who isn?t her brother by blood because she's adopted but who isi still for all intents and purposes her relative. Juicy. Damn you, BBC America. Watching: Las Vegas.